Maybe Read Me? A Plea from That One Decaying Book in the Little Library

I know what I look like. Behind these tiny glass doors, stuck in the corner. Despite being made of paper, I look like melted wax. It’s not even my fault, this is just how I was written.

I have been here a while, at the Clawson Street’s Little Library. I have seen many seasons change, looking out to this tree-lined suburbia. We are actually quite a cute one, our little red and brown A-Frame is a stand out in the community. In the winter we have wreaths, in the summer we have flowers.

For a time, I was beautiful. My lush navy hardcover had skin-puncturing corners. My pages were stark white. I had that smell that people make candles out of. I was sturdy, my binds had not yet crumbled. My pages are not yet dog-eared.

My first home was the current events section of a Borders bookstore. For a time, I was what the cool books called a New York Times Bestseller. Now the new books tell me that I am no longer in print and all the Borders are gone. I have to imagine those spaces became something nice, like a Kmart or a Spirit Halloween.

But a nice older woman picked me up, Susie. She even paid full price, picking me up with a copy of Harry Potter for her grandchild. A kind soul who was a voracious reader. But for me? Not so much.

She read my first fifty pages before setting me down for the night. I jumped from the nightstand to the coffee table to sideways on the bookshelf to tucked away on the top corner, with other unfinished books.

Susie’s children came to downsize and move her into an assisted living facility.

They started by packing away the books she would take. I saw Handmaid’s Tale, Grapes of Wrath, and Becoming being packed in a cardboard box.

Her son came through and roughly tossed me in a milk box. How could I complain it was the first time I was touched in years.

Then I was brought here, my home, the Little Library on Clawson. That was ten years ago.

At first, people picked me up and turned me over to get a nice look at my back. A few would finger through my pages. But they all put me back. Then I suffered through too many winters. Books get cold too.

Over time, no one would pick me up. Some would openly sneer at me. Eventually my cover became hard to decipher and was covered in bubbling acne. No one has really looked at me since.

I guess I’m just not that popular. I have seen dozens of copies of Hunger Games come and go. The Giving Tree and Where The Wild Things Are are a dime a dozen. I had longtime friends in a few David McCullough histories, but even they piqued the interest of a dad on a walk with their daughter.

But as for me, I am the old guard of the Little Library. This library will be my coffin when a rough storm eventually takes us down. But even though I am barely read, it doesn’t mean I am useless. I am grateful to have ever been printed.

But if anyone is still interested, at the Clawson Street Little Library there is a decaying copy of The Way Things Ought to Be by Rush Limbaugh.